Wheatley's Return
by WarriorsRule4
Summary: Wheatley has been in space for years, and it's time for him to make a comeback. Rated K for the disturbing parts of Portal's back-stories and possible violence to come.
1. Did You Miss Me?

I hate it here. Space. Looks pretty from Earth, but it's big and it's boring and I can't stand being here. Especially with that Space Sphere. Him, I'm just tired of. I turned off my hearing system a year ago. I got here years and years ago (absolutely ages!), and everything is becoming sickening. And with every passing day, I wish more and more that I could take everything back. I let the power go to my head. I'm not a moron, not in the slightest, but I realise that I can't deal with power. Or maybe it was GLaDOS's body. Yeah, more likely. She's a bit of a nut-job, if you think about it. Totally loony. Killed tons of scientists with her deadly neurotoxin that she loves so much, put Chell through all that testing. I put Chell through testing too, of course. I also caused GLaDOS to wake up when trying to help Chell escape. Was that where it went wrong? Maybe.

I can't help but feel everything is my fault. When I first got here, I blamed GLaDOS and Chell, and the corrupted cores they put on me too. But really, it was me. I get that. As mentioned prior, not a moron.

But today I turned my hearing system back on, and the Space Sphere said something interest, and not to do with space. I was shocked, totally shocked. How long had he been saying stuff other than "I'm in space!"? Had I missed out on much? Ah well, got this interesting thing. And it's not only interesting, but surprisingly helpful. Let's just say that Earth shouldn't be missing me for too much longer.

I wonder if it's changed since I was there. Not that a saw much of it, just the part of it within Aperture Laboratories. Once Wheatley Laboratories but... we all know how that ended. Has GLaDOS changed? Probably not. Not any more since the potato incident, anyway. I'm guessing she's still her strange self, obsessed with neurotoxin and armed with a dry humour. I wouldn't be surprised.

As for Chell, I doubt I'll get to see her again. And even if I did, she'd likely shun me. Who would forgive someone that tried to kill them with mashy spike plates? I certainly wouldn't. I doubt Chell would be any more forgiving than me. Then again, she became pretty good pals with GLaDOS while she was PotatOS, so I'll try and hope for the best.

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**Rather short, I know, but I hope you enjoyed it. This was more of a prologue / introduction, so the upcoming chapters will be longer. Please review and/or follow!**


	2. There's Science To Do

It had been six long years since she'd disposed of the lunatic. The first few were easy, testing and doing Science, without getting murdered, or put in potatoes, or fed to birds. It had been wonderful. But the past two years or so had been... disappointing. Without the brain damaged lunatic, it had been boring. Atlas and P-Body had been good enough, but robots just didn't seem to produce the right data. Plus, they were far less entertaining to watch go up in flames. The ending was already spoilt for her by now (hint: they were rebuilt). It was getting irritating. Test. Blow up. Rebuild. Test. The idiots.

Not the most idiotic idiots she'd ever met, of course - not by a long way. How could they ever be when the moron had been here six years ago? When it came to him, six years hadn't seemed long enough. An Intelligence Dampening Sphere, designed to spit out terrible ideas and latch onto her like a tumour. That was perhaps the worst core the scientists had ever created, and she'd had a _lot_ of personality cores stuck onto her in that early beginning.

Ah, her early years. An infant of sorts. Now she was more mature, more developed, better educated, and, most importantly, more informed on how to activate the neurotoxin emitters before they shut her down again to build a new core. It had helped a lot. Once they were all out of the way, she'd begun testing. Those had been her glory days. Watching test subjects and informing them on their progress with a carefully executed dry humour. She was an expert in that field, along with many, many others. She was the biggest collection of knowledge either to exist. She was _perfect_.

But even perfection had its flaws (not really - it wasn't her fault in the slightest), and hers was that she'd lost the lunatic. Dangerous, mute, brain damaged, and the best test subject around. But aside from all that, the moron had been the worst Relaxation Centre Attendee yet and thanks to him all the other test subjects were dead. Which was a problem, because whilst watching two inexpicably stupid robots run around testing tracks and waving at each other was hilarious, it wasn't the Science she knew and loved. It was like a cheap knock-off from the original. A counterfeit. A forgery. An evil twin. That wasn't what she wanted.  
And she always got what she wanted.


	3. Free

The first few years had been tentative, every sound gunfire and every movement an earthquake. The hum of machines set her on edge and certain words made her flinch. It had taken five years to finally settle down, but she still couldn't quite take for granted that she was alive and free from that place. In the twisted words of the artificial intelligence, it had been Science. In her own, it was war. An isolated war, far below the rest of the world, but a war all the same. Savage and consequential, in the way that a single wrong move could mean the difference between life and death.

_If at first you don't succeed, you fail._

She believed herself to have succeeded, after so much testing. The testing had lasted months, she was sure, and who knew how long she was in cryo-sleep. She didn't even want to think about it. The entire place was a disaster, a trap set to spring on everyone that entered, resetting itself for the next unfortunate soul.

But whilst the place was horrific, the experience was worse.

The first time she'd escaped, she'd done it simply to be free from testing and the dry, mocking voice that taunted her and turned those brilliant successes into failures. How, she'd never been sure. It was insane that anything, especially a robot, however sentient, could take her pride and crush it like paper in her metallic claws. But the second time had been different. The second time, she was trying to escape all the same, this time with a nervous, bumbling voice constantly talking to her. It had become strangely relaxing, and in other circumstances, she might have sat back and listened to it quietly. In that place, though, you had to keep moving, and so she'd carried the talkative sphere around as she completed the puzzled and did her best to get out. And he'd done his best to help. Yes, the voice had woken up, but he'd still stayed with her, up until that fateful moment where he turned on her, betrayed her, and tried to kill her. It was something she was sure she'd forget, or remember faintly with a bitter tone, but after six years of fresh air and real people around her, a year of barely thinking about that place, and several months of therapy, she could still remember his name, clear as a bell and fresh as a ripe tomato.

_Wheatley._


End file.
